Thrill-Bent Page 26
The El Cortez was another San Diego landmark that had lost some luster since its glory days in the first half of the twentieth century. Bing Crosby and Ginger Rogers used to hang out there, and big bands played in the Don Room, the luxurious ballroom nightclub. In the 1950s, the famously brash hotelier Harry Handlery added the world’s first outside hydraulic glass elevator to the building’s facade (causing concern among architectural historians, who thought it made a mockery of the original Spanish Renaissance design) and a skyway fitted with a motorized moving sidewalk called the Travelator, which connected the hotel to its sister motel across the street. The Travelator was also taken over by homeless people after the motel’s demise. (Apparently, downtown San Diego was teeming with vagrants who were constantly scouting for the next possible demolition site onto which to steer their shopping carts—but I, child-tourist from the suburbs, never noticed, wandering through that urban core with stars in my eyes and the Condor on my arm, giddy from all the engineered velocity.) Both the glass elevator and the moving sidewalk were state-of-the-art technologies at the time, and I considered them to be thrillingly World’s Fair–worthy. The St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco soon copied Handlery’s glass elevator concept (actually, he later credited the idea to a daydreaming bellhop, which sounds to me like a plot for a Frank Capra movie), and London’s Heathrow Airport implemented moving walkways in the 1960s, but the pioneering El Cortez made my hometown seem very sophisticated, at least to me.
Belmont Park was reopened in 1996 after a massive infusion of public and private funds, but I haven’t been on the West Coast since then—until today. A polo-shirted teenager gestures me into a parking spot between a hulking Lincoln Navigator and a Ford Sierra with a “Freedom Ain’t Free” bumpersticker, and I find myself already pining for the old days. The clean-cut, wand-waving teen gives me the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. He doesn’t even looked stoned, and no one vaguely homeless is on the premises, though you could comfortably house a family of four in most of the vehicles in this lot.
I told Betty I needed to come here alone today. I have to start getting used to the idea of a remarried, tic-free Condor, and I thought riding the Giant Dipper by myself might help me to exorcise some of the old twists and turns of fate that still rankle me. Out with the old dad and in with the new. Betty was pretty hungover anyway, happy to stay in the motel room and nurse her headache with the Diet Coke and trashy magazines I’d brought her from a convenience store. When I left, she was propped up on three pillows, sleep mask pushed back like a headband, smoking the second half of the cigarette she’d stubbed out in the soap dish last night. “Whoa, Rumer Willis was born with a third nipple?” I heard her ask herself as the door swung shut.
The Dipper doesn’t look the same, and I am instantly disappointed. I know its restoration was thorough and exacting—the wooden structure was braced and refitted, and each tie on the track was placed by hand—but the new cars are painted a plasticky, aggressively shiny yellow and blue, as though they’re trying to hide their classic wooden coaster status and fit in with the hipper Six Flags crowd. The phrase “A Hipper Dipper” jumps to mind before I can stop it, and I pray that the term wasn’t thrown around at PR planning meetings. The main scaffolding, despite the poor paint choices, looks pretty much the way I remember, with gorgeous swooping cross-hatch patterns, but the whole structure appears smaller to me now. Maybe because I was forty-two inches tall the last time I rode it, or maybe because I was on the massive Coney Island Cyclone only a month ago, the Giant Dipper seems more like a Medium Dipper, more like the Kukwa-dan or even an effete Santa Monica pier bauble than the grand dame I recall.
You have to buy a ticket now at a central booth (you used to just pay cash to a stoned teenager before boarding), which requires you to walk farther inside the midway than you might wish, if you’re over sixteen and not in search of chocolate-dipped bacon or temporary tattoos. Next to the ticket booth sits a small toothless man whom I initially—I admit, with a certain optimistic zeal—took to be a vagrant, but who is in fact distributing flyers that offer “Psychic Readings by Miss Sybil $10” in the First Aid tent by the parking lot. I like the idea of psychic appraisal being a form of first aid. I take a flyer and stuff it in my pocket.
“Do you think it’s in my future to get a psychic reading by Miss Sybil?” I ask the small hobo impersonator, who is sitting on an upended pail that once contained an industrial cleaning agent.
He stares at me intensely for a few seconds, as though he is contemplating my destiny. Then he shrugs. “I don’t really give a shit what you do,” he says, and looks away again.
My first ride is patently uncomfortable. I choose a seat in the middle of the train, but even there, I am battered so brutally on the turns that I worry about what spectacular bruises a skinny person might sustain. Was it this bad when I was a kid? Maybe I felt pain differently then. At some point after the first drop and subsequent banked turns, I just try to cover my head with my arms to ward off a concussion—a tactic that leaves my neck vulnerable to snapping back and forth like a crash test dummy, so I grab the side of the car and white-knuckle it, refusing to slide down the waxed bench seat at each fan curve. There is a lap-bar restraint, just like in the old days, but the violent shaking of the Dipper is like a career alcoholic with the DTs; there are too many terrifying monsters to be purged. It would be better if I could sit sideways with my feet flat against the other end of the bench to brace myself, but I can’t rotate that much. Imagine riding in the back of a fast pickup truck down a steep, rocky grade, with nothing to stabilize you. You’d be bouncing around like a nut in a blender.
When I say my dad took me to the Starlight Room for a Shirley Temple, I’m falling into the childhood habit of taking for granted that everything revolved around me (or not habit, but more like prolonged hallucination). I can’t say exactly when that beguiling dream ended, but for most of my early childhood I felt like the most favored concubine in a harem. I can picture us in the glass elevator (informally called the Starlight Express), me in my white go-go boots and a leather skirt, pressing my nose to the glass, and my dad in his sans-a-belt slacks and a red guayabera shirt, looking bored with the skyline. He’d usher me straight into the bar, which was on the opposite side from the restaurant when we exited the elevator, and for some reason no one ever said or even intimated that it was inappropriate to bring a child in there. My dad had a special dispensation somehow—all the cocktail waitresses knew me and would rush over to bring me trinkets or break out a deck of cards and play War with me on the bar between customers. I’d grab a few boxes of Starlight Room matches (blue with pink tips) on the way in, and I’d light each one before tossing it into an ashtray from a few feet away. The bar was always busy, though, even on Saturday afternoons, and often I found myself perched alone on a heavy barstool while my dad worked the room. I knew he didn’t like when I watched him too closely, so I would pretend to be absorbed in a game of Solitaire while taking frequent surreptitious glances in the bar mirror, those gold-veined wall tiles that made everything look like it was happening underwater. The Condor rarely sat down, just floated over the crowd and dipped down occasionally to laugh with a redhead or squeeze the bare shoulder of a blond.
For my second go-round on the renovated Dipper, I decide to wait in line for the back car, like I used to do when I knew better, when I craved its whip-tail velocity. But I have a plan: I will find another single rider and propose we ride together. There are many times in life when I prefer to be alone, many activities that improve considerably when they are managed in private—reading, ice skating, pitting olives with my teeth, driving over a bridge in a storm—but riding a rickety old wooden roller coaster is not one of them. Any notion I had that riding solo would help me cast out the unquiet spirit of the Condor was dispelled by the first body slam. This is the first time on my cross-country trip that I’ve ridden a roller coaster without a companion—and also the first time I’ve managed to procure om
inous bruises and a whiplashy neck cramp. Now I see what all those other bodies were good for: they cushioned me from harm.
A teenage girl with long black hair stands in line in front of me. Even before she turns around, I know she must be a goth, because nobody has jet-black hair in San Diego. Even the Mexicans and Asians have highlights. She is as tall as I am and considerably rounder, wearing a tight black T-shirt that says Go Ahead, Fuck With Me. I wonder if goth is the only option now, if you’re a fat teenager. Kind of like being a drama geek was the only option when I was a chubby teenager. Wait, I bet you can still be a fat drama geek, so I guess there are two choices now. Progress!
“Hey,” I say, trying to catch her eye and at the same time act casual and non-threatening. “I like your shirt.”
Not raising her eyes from the ground, she nods. She pivots almost imperceptibly toward me, and I take that as a sign to continue the conversation. “I’m thinking about waiting for the back car,” I say, gesturing toward the left end of the platform. “Do you ever do that?” She shrugs. “Want to ride in the back car with me? I don’t know if they let you go alone.” This is a blatant fabrication, of course they allow single riders, and I give myself a start, glancing again at the message on her shirt. I’m not fucking with her, I reassure myself, I’m just trying to rustle up a little human companionship. I think about saying out loud I’m not fucking with you, I promise. “I mean, if you’re not riding with anyone ...” I mumble.
She looks up for the first time, and pulls her hair behind her ear. She is pale, with a few freckles (is that strawberry blond under that raven hair dye?) and a puffy, Angelina Jolie mouth. She’s got spider web tattoos on her hands, so she must be a little older than her teens—what parent would let their child tattoo their hands? Then again, she might have come down here to Mission Beach after school one day and convinced some hard-up scratcher in the back of a smoke shop to ink her up; maybe she is punk-rock enough to suffer the consequences from mom and dad. But where did she get the money? These tattoos look pretty intricate. Babysitting service? Told dad it was for textbooks? Maybe she was one of those diligent, sweet-looking neighborhood redheads who washed cars and sold lemonade and babysat and surprised the shit out of everyone when she turned eighteen and showed up at the block barbecue with blue-black hair and Morticia Addams mitts. I bet she perfected the spider web design with her sketchbook in her lap during the entire semester of Algebra II.
“Yeah,” she shrugs. “I’ll ride with you. You get more air back there.”
(“Getting air” does not refer to enjoying a breeze, but more specifically to your ass being literally lifted off the seat by negative g-forces. The Voyage, in Santa Claus, Indiana, holds the unofficial record for offering the most airtime on a wooden coaster, which is twenty-four seconds. There is some math secret, known only to a certain engineering cabal, that determines the precise parabolic shape of the first drop that leads to maximum negative Gs. Roller coaster devotees love to feel like they’re being spat out into the universe.)
“Oh, great. I’m Jan,” I say, and offer my hand before I realize how profoundly uncool a handshake probably is to a goth teenager. But she tentatively pets my hand with hers, as though she’s not quite sure how to execute the maneuver. Her spider webs are pink around the edges and her palms feel puffy and smooth, like satiny pincushions. I squeeze, but not too hard. “Are these new?” I ask, bringing her artwork closer to my face. “They’re really detailed.”
She pulls her hand back and tucks it into the pocket of her jeans. But I notice a tiny smile emerge, which she clamps down immediately by pressing her lips together. I wonder if this is the first time someone has complimented her hands.
“I know a spider web on your elbow supposedly means you’ve spent time in prison,” I venture. “But on the hand ... does that have some significance? Like, is it a warning that you might ensnare people if they come too close?”
She stares at me, skeptical. My articulation of her tattoos’ obvious symbolism has thrown her. This must be new work, or she would be used to answering questions by now, at least cursorily. Didn’t she expect people to be curious about her latticed wrists? You can’t spend your life with your hands in your pockets. Unless you want to live in Juneau and wear opossum-lined mittens year-round.
Hands shoved hard down into her jeans, she turns away from me and gazes into the middle distance. Her face is Delphic, deadpan, unadorned. She has perfected the Come Here/Go Away game, a more sophisticated version of peekaboo where she tests reality by hiding in plain sight.
It’s funny about teenagers. She must wonder what my deal is, why I’m alone in line for the Giant Dipper on a Monday at noon, trolling for a warm body to ride in the back car with, courting young girls with flattering remarks about their clothing and tattoos. Forty-year-old lesbian cruising Belmont Park for some mid-morning tail? But she would never just come out and ask me: Lady, what’s your angle? After a few years of dispiriting adulthood, it might dawn on her that she’s allowed to go ahead and say what’s on her mind, even to strangers. Even if it’s not particularly polite or pleasant. That’s what growing up means: you can be yourself, ask silly questions, flaunt your tattoos. It’s the way adults find each other in the darkness. But, sigh, for a few more years she will have to depend on sloganed T-shirts to send her message of ambivalence to the world.
I don’t remember much about riding the Giant Dipper with my dad. I don’t think we waited for the back car; he wouldn’t have had the patience for that. I like to imagine that we played word games while we waited in line, like Twenty Questions or One, Two, Three, but even caught up in the nucleus of my fantasy I know that never would have happened. We were probably silent, and I probably inched forward too close to the lady in front of me, and he probably grabbed my arm and yanked me back a foot or two. I know I felt excited to be riding with the Condor, to be seen with him. But when I try to picture his face—even in the middle of the steepest drop, with our butts lifted an inch off the seat and my hands gripping the lap bar for dear life—I can’t see any amazement or fear in his eyes. His eyebrows aren’t even raised and his breath isn’t sharp. His fists might be chopping the air decisively like a victorious athlete, his forehead creased with effort and joy. He might be yelling “Cocksucking shitfuck twatwaffle assbag!” but his expression is unsurprised and triumphant, as though he knew that of course this moment was coming, and he is congratulating himself for being right all along.
Morticia doesn’t tell me her name, and I don’t ask because really, what’s the point? Are we going to keep in touch? Will I see her in ten years across a crowded savannah and want to shout “Hey! Courtney!” to get her attention? Not bloody likely. Betty has counseled me to take people’s names and have them sign a libel waiver whenever possible (she herself procured these from Furry and Buffy), but the waiver forms are still in the zip pocket of my suitcase. Nothing kills a spontaneous interaction faster than the question, “Can I get you to sign on this line?” I prefer to change names and obfuscate details. Morticia is not the only goth teen in the world with spider web hand tattoos, that much I’m sure of. I’ll alter a few details; maybe make her a redhead.
The second run is considerably less painful and more fun than my first. Mort’s plush body buffers the harshest corners and yanks (though I try to keep from bouncing off her large and springy side boobage, for propriety’s sake), and the back car does provide the capricious thrills I remember. Not only is there more airtime, but the sharp turns are more terrifying because you have a second or two to anticipate them as you watch each car ahead hit the bend before you do.
The whole time we’re on the Dipper, I don’t think about my dad. It’s only when I step off the train onto the platform and make my way down the creaky metal ramp, pottering among the other dizzy riders as we all recover our walking skills, that I remember how the Condor would place his hand on my shoulder as we debarked. His hand was as heavy as a brick, reminding me that the force o
f gravity had never truly left us. Just as he didn’t seem fazed during the ride, my dad didn’t show any signs of having been physically affected by the Dipper. As everyone staggered drunkenly down the exit ramp onto the hot asphalt, he would saunter gracefully in a sober line, basking in his own particular volition.
Dear Chantelle, what were you thinking? Don’t you know that a bathtub, minus the bathwater, minus the baby, is nothing but an empty bodybag? You can’t feel the cold if there’s no heat. Or maybe you’re one of those people who doesn’t understand beauty; maybe you want to pluck the element of surprise from every molecule, pry the word paradox apart like a pomegranate. Me, I can’t help it. I miss him like fireworks.
Morticia declines my offer to buy her a psychic reading, and I can’t say I blame her. What could someone named “Miss Sybil” possibly tell you, when you’re eighteen, that you don’t already know? Your life will be tragic and wonderful and filled with incandescent lights glowing like beacons along paths that lead to bitter disappointment and indescribable joy? No shit. You will be lucky in love and then unlucky in love, and then unlucky in love some more? Today marks your fifth-to-last ride on the Big Dipper? The spider webs on your hands will attract and repel exotic, winged creatures all your life?
Miss Sybil does not have a crystal ball or a deck of tarot cards. In fact, she’s barely dressed. She appears to be napping when I duck my head inside the first aid tent. Wrapped in a threadbare terrycloth robe and splayed on a metal folding chair like it’s a divan, Miss Sybil (I know it’s Miss Sybil because she’s sitting behind a Comic Sans banner taped to a card table that reads, “Miss Sybil Knows—All You Have to Do Is Ask”) snores lightly; one of her skinny bare legs has kicked off its cover, revealing several rotting yellow bruises on her upper thigh.